Ensuring Relevance and Excellence at Redbeat Academy

“There are about 1.5 million tech talent in Malaysia and over 90 per cent of those are from foreign countries,” Robin Coenraad, Digital Marketing Trainer at Redbeat Academy stated in an exclusive interview with GRADUAN® when asked about the academy and what they do.

Realising the importance of Malaysians staying relevant in the workforce and adapting to the Fourth Industrial revolution, AirAsia Digital in partnership with Google Cloud established Redbeat Academy, your one stop Malaysian-made solution to upskilling and reskilling, ensuring talent stay relevant in today’s ever changing workforce.

Established in October 2020, the academy was initially set up to upskill the AirAsia workforce (popularly known AirAsia Allstars) but has since opened its doors to the public, providing a variety of courses entailing the world’s most sought after digital skills including Digital Marketing, UI/UX Design, Cloud Infrastructure, Data Analytics, Cybersecurity and many more taught by experienced professionals like Robin, who boasts over a decade of experience working in the marketing field and is one of the very first digital marketing practitioners in Malaysia, starting his digital marketing career in 2010 fresh out of college.

What started out as casual mamak sessions held with friends eventually turned into ‘pay-as-you-wish’ classes (now formal mamak sessions). After advancing his career, Robin worked with a number of different organisations, racking up years of experience along the way before he joined AirAsia Allstars in August last year to support the digital revolution the company embarked on.

LEADING THE DIGITAL ECONOMY
To put it in layman terms, Robin describes digital skills and economies as “technology-related skills required to advance a society as a whole, making the nation more economically competitive while a digital economy is one that leverages on thriving technologies such as AI, Data Analytics, Digital Marketing and more” which are all courses that Redbeat offers in its online library.

It’s important that members of an economy are equipped with the right digital skills in order to enable a digital economy. However, many Malaysians are unaware of the importance of upskilling and reskilling themselves and Robin feels that at this point in time, the public needs to know the consequences of not making a change. They will be left behind.

In order to combat this, Redbeat has since launched marketing campaigns trying to change the perception and mindset of the Malaysian public to spur them on to make an initiative to change their lives for the better. This is reflected in the structure of courses offered by the academy.

Courses offered by Redbeat range in duration with their long track courses being held anywhere between three to six months long while their “bite-sized” courses can be completed within two to six hours. At the end of the study, certificates will be issued to talent.

It’s not all theory at Redbeat though, at the end of the long track courses talent will be attached with a member of the AirAsia group of companies (like Santan, BigPay and IKHLAS!) and this is where they will be put through a capstone project that is similar to an internship.

During this time, they’ll be putting their lessons learnt on screen into practice. Successful capstone assignments will translate to a distinction certificate that is bound to increase their employability and open up a whole new world of opportunities.

“Having multiple certificates in different fields of knowledge is better than having one degree or diploma certificate,” Robin exclaimed while explaining the different courses that is offered by Redbeat Academy, with long track courses holistically covering the field of choice.

To give our readers an idea of what each course entails, Robin gave us a little teaser about the Digital Marketing syllabus he teaches at Redbeat.

“Digital marketing is huge and it changes every day. Me and a colleague, Ciayi, cover different aspects of the subject but there are the six main pillars we stress upon which are online branding, content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, search engine optimisation as well as search engine marketing,” Robin explained.

“Ciayi covers the creative aspect of the subject while I focus on the data and technical side of digital marketing. The reason we structured our courses in such a way is because after studying the different institutions across the country, we realise that there isn’t an academy that offers the holisticness of courses the way we do here at Redbeat. Our courses stretch for up to four to five months which means there will be training courses every single day for that period,” he continued.

Among the courses you can sit in with Robin and Ciayi at Redbeat include The Digital Marketing Landscape where talent will learn about the overall environment and landscape of digital marketing in the 21st century and where it’s headed; and The Elements of a Digital Marketing Strategy takes you through the various marketing models used in the industry today.

In the long run, Redbeat aims to be the future of tertiary education and with how holistic their courses are designed, they’re definitely in the right path. Discover a window of opportunities at Redbeat Academy by clicking here! Sign up for a bite-sized course today to get a glimpse of the future.